


Fireflies

by MirrorMystic



Series: Those Who Carry The Flame [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Action, Drama, F/F, Gen, POV First Person, Post-Apocalypse, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-10-24 15:58:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10744968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorMystic/pseuds/MirrorMystic
Summary: Twenty years ago, the sky fell in, and monsters descended upon us, but the world did not end. We’re still here, despite everything. We’ve made it this far. And we’ll make it further. I know we will. We’ll just take it a day at a time.My name is Eliza Beauchene, and this wretched world hasn’t killed us yet.





	Fireflies

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from Tumblr; originally written 1/24/17.

~*~  
  
_The World is changing._  
  
_Darkness gathers like a storm, bringing fear and pain in its wake. And in the darkness, we cling to whatever light we can._  
  
_The World burns, whether as a beacon or a pyre, and all eyes are drawn to the flame. But just for this moment, let us turn away. Let us look past the fires of martyrs and madmen, heroes and saints, lives so bright that they’re blinding to look upon. Let us look further, to the smallest of us, to the embers kicked up by the flame._  
  
_This is a tale of those little souls. Those who did not quite succumb, or overcome, but those who simply survived the dark, and found light where they could, if only for a time. Those who were, perhaps, not great, but knew the presence of greatness, and basked in its glow._  
  
_This is a tale of those who find light where they can- a tale of fireflies that yet flew among eagles._  
  
~*~

  
I never did like my hair.  
  
Maybe that’s an inane thought to have. And, I mean, it is, especially at a time like this.  
  
Maybe I should back up. My hair is my shield, you see? My curtain. When I was a kid, I never wanted to talk to anybody. Never opened up. All I had to do was tip my head so my hair fell across my face and there you go- my shields are up, and no fear or worry can get to me.  
  
I’m older, now. A bit less withdrawn. A bit less reserved. And I’m a Hunter, so I can’t exactly show up for work with my hair in my face. That’s why, every morning, before we go to bell service, Yasmin sits on my bed and does my hair. That little bit of peace and quiet is my favorite part of every morning, when Yasmin pulls all my worries away and ties them into a tidy braid.  
  
Knowing all that, I’m sure you understand why I’m distracted. Because a lock of my hair’s wiggled out of the braid somehow, and that means a lock of worry dangling in front of my eyes, while a rancid, animated corpse is snapping at my face.  
  
Sorry. Maybe I should back up a little more.  
  
My name is Eliza Beauchene. I live on the planet Demeter, an agri-world before things went to shit twenty years ago, and honest-to-god monsters started running amok. I’m 5’5”, which is tall for my age, or so I hear. Yasmin Quintana is my best friend, and she’s also my, er, _roommate_. So it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for us when she looked out our window this morning, sighed, and said:  
  
“There’s a ghoul in our driveway.”  
  
Yasmin and I live in a town called Elk Lake, which has neither elk or a lake. We’re Hunters, which just means that if we see a ghoul- say, in our driveway- we don’t call for help, we are the help. And we’re also Adepts. The Professor says that’s just the general term for anyone who can use magic, but I think that’s giving us too much credit, since ‘adept’ makes it sound like we’re actually any good.  
  
So, that’s how we wound up here, in our driveway, fully dressed but only half-awake, dealing with a walking corpse prowling for its breakfast before we’ve even had ours.  
  
I am, understandably, not in the best mood.  
  
The ghoul was a man once, and a hockey fan at that, his torn jersey looking oddly right at home with the snowy ground and the gloomy, overcast sky. He must’ve caught all his games on the extranet, since Demeter never got cold enough for ice hockey. It barely got cold enough for snow, and we don’t even get the good kind- we get the dirty, slushy shit that makes walking a nightmare, never any of the nice fairy tale fluff.  
  
He lunges at me, his jaw hanging open, not unlike some morons I grew up with, and I punch him in the chin, slamming his jaw shut with a clack of bone.  
  
“I hope you bite your tongue in two!” I snap at him. I’m snippy today, raw, like a nerve, like the throbbing in my knuckles and in my thumb from poor technique. Closed fist. Yasmin would scoff.  
  
The ghoul falls on his ass, in the slush piling up on our driveway. He tries to get up, slips, then gets up again, his empty white eyes fixed on me. He groans, his rancid breath fogging the air, the cold only slightly dulling his stench. The stench of death.  
  
Something about that smell just rubs me raw. I grit my teeth, my patience slipping.    
  
I lift up my hand, and a halo of golden light forms around my fingers. I trace a sigil within the ring, my fingertips forming the stars of a new constellation-  
  
He’s on me, faster than I expected, grabbing me by the wrists and slamming me back against the garage door, hard enough to shake clumps of snow from the roof. The back of my head smacks against the door and gets my vision swimming.  
  
There’s a wet, meaty thud as Yasmin buries a blade in the ghoul’s head, chopping in from the side and lodging in the thing’s temple. She takes her machete by the handle and wrenches it sideways, sending the ghoul staggering towards the street, oblivious to gash in its head.  
  
I lift my hand and complete the sign.  
  
There’s a flash of light and a sound like glass shattering, and suddenly, the ghoul is ablaze from the waist up, burning with a smokeless white fire. It collapses into a shapeless heap, sliding down our driveway on a layer of slush before settling in the street.  
  
I take a deep breath. It doesn’t smell like death at all.  
  
My head hurts. I reach behind me and poke at it, wincing. I cast an irritable glare at the garage door. For its part, it doesn’t seem too apologetic.  
  
“Are you okay?” Yasmin asks me, slipping her machete back into the pouch on her hip.  
  
“I hit my head,” I whine.  
  
“You poor thing,” Yasmin coos. She pats me on the head, like a child, before pulling me close-  
  
I place a hand on her shoulder and squeeze, just so. She stops, watching me. I shake my head.  
  
The anxiety is already worming into me, tightening my jaw. I swallow.  
  
“Not outside,” I say, finally. Yasmin nods.  
  
And that just sour my mood even more. Today I woke up to a gloomy, overcast day, had a ghoul almost bite my head off, smacked my head on the garage door… the day hasn’t had the best start, and we haven’t even gotten to work yet. But that little thing at the end- something as simple and small as stopping Yasmin from kissing me in public- that’s what really rankles. That’s what hurts.  
  
I sigh gloomily, making my way down to the street. Yasmin follows at my heels.  
  
“We’ll have to shovel eventually,” she says, back to business, though I can hear the tinge of disappointment in her voice.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“And the skimmer’s out of commission until we can get a new battery..”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“We’re going to be late for bell service.”  
  
“I _know_ , Yas.”  
  
“The Professor won’t be happy…”  
  
I don’t want to snap at her. I don’t. But this morning’s piled up a litter of little things, and I’m committed to my bad mood. I’m ready, ready to whirl around and say something hurtful that’ll feel good for one smug, self-righteous second, and then I’ll regret it for the rest of the day.  
  
I don’t do that. Instead, I whirl around, open my mouth as if to say something, and then I slip on the sidewalk and fall on my ass.  
  
It happens so suddenly that I actually don’t know what to say. I stare at Yasmin, dumbly.  
  
“Are you okay?” She asks, offering me a hand. I reach up…  
  
..and then I pull her down into the snow with me.  
  
“Are _you_ okay?” I ask, snorting.  
  
“Don’t laugh,” Yasmin whines.  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“Don’t _laugh_!”  
  
“I’m _not_!”  
  
I am. And so’s Yasmin. I’m laughing so hard that my chest hurts and the bump on my head throbs. We just lay there on the sidewalk, letting water seep into our clothes, laughing like idiots at the absurdity of it all. The ordinary sidewalk, slippery when wet, proved a more formidable foe than the servants of dark gods.  
  
I think about all the little things that can sour my mood and get me worrying- like a ghoul in my driveway, to gloomy weather, to even the tiniest things, like just having a hair out of place- and I think about how all those little annoyances just evaporate when I’m with her.  
  
I lie there, stifling giggles. Absently, Yasmin’s fingers curl around mine. I give her hand a squeeze.  
  
“…Y’know we’re going to have to change out of these clothes, right?”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
“Then we’re really going to be late for bell service.”  
  
“Yep!”  
  
“And the Professor definitely won’t be happy with us.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” I turn, and meet Yasmin’s eyes. I grin. “Well, _fuck him_!”  
  
We lay there, in Demeter’s terrible, slushy snow, and together, we laughed and laughed.  
  
~*~  
  
We were still laughing when we arrived at the chapel twenty minutes later, and Professor Brennan Maxwell was waiting in the doorway, leaning on his long-handled cane that was really more of a staff.  
  
“You’re late,” he said, without looking at us.  
  
“Sorry, Professor,” Yasmin mumbled. I couldn’t help but snort.  
  
“Got the giggles, Miss Beauchene?” he asked, which, of course, only made us giggle harder. He sighed wearily, waving us into the room. We moved to go in, but then he tapped the wooden floor with his cane, and we stopped.  
  
“Wipe your feet,” he tutted.  
  
I rolled my eyes, then did what I was told.  
  
We found a seat by our neighbors, the Shimizu twins, mainly because Mika Shimizu waved us over with an enthusiasm no one should be able to muster this early in the morning. We sidled into the pew beside her, exchanged awkward sitting-hugs, and then politely waved hello to her brother, Miki, who nodded at us stony-faced before returning his attention to the pulpit.  
  
“Hey! Where’ve you guys been?” Mika asked.  
  
“Sorry,” Yasmin said. “There was a ghoul in our driveway.”  
  
“Yeah? Did you kill it?”  
  
“Eliza did,” Yasmin nodded.  
  
“I blew it up with magic,” I grinned.  
  
“Oooh,” Mika cooed. “I wish I could’ve seen it.”  
  
Miki glared at us from behind his glasses. He raised a finger to his lips for silence.  
  
Fine. I guess we’ll catch up after service. It’s not like we hear this stuff every morning, Miki.  
  
Bell services take place at the three bells, morning, noon, and evening. Everyone in town is expected to go to at least one a day. Because of work, and class, Yasmin and I can’t make the later two, which means we go to morning bell service at sunrise- to my everlasting chagrin.  
  
The Shimizus aren’t just our neighbors. They’re Hunters, too. Not only that, but they’re also Adepts- and rather more adept at it than Yasmin and I. Miki can make magical barriers, which naturally makes him popular for sentry duty. I don’t think I’ve seen Mika use her powers. She says they’re “not ideal against ghouls”, whatever that means.  
  
I adore Mika. She’s everyone’s little sister. She’s cute and fun and full of energy, as lively and cheerful as Yasmin is grounded and practical. I don’t really know much about Miki, though, honestly. We don’t talk much. I do know that he goes to the trouble of wearing a tie to bell service, which I think says it all, really.  
  
I slouched forward, leaning my elbow on the pew in front of me, and resting my chin in my hand. Brother Eli was a nice enough guy out on the street, but he could just go on and on. I shifted in my seat, his droning sermon sailing comfortably over my head, instead finding my eyes drawn to the mosaic on the wall behind him.  
  
The mosaic depicted a woman in a white dress, her eyes hidden behind a crimson blindfold, her long blond hair forming a halo around her head, all depicted in chips of glass and stone. It was beautifully made, especially as it was made of scraps. But every morning, when I saw it looming over Brother Eli, it gave me a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach.  
  
“Let us pray,” Brother Eli said, and despite the eerie feeling the mosaic gave me, I couldn’t look away. “Today, and every day, we remember that moment of infamy twenty years ago when Seth, the Defiler, came upon our world. And today, and every day, we honor the Saint, by whose sacrifice the Mirage was cast from our land. And though she toppled their master, the servants of darkness continue to run amok- and so we send our champions to continue her fight, our proud Hunters, our warriors of light!”  
  
I screwed my eyes shut, trembling. Brother Eli’s words should be inspiring, but instead I felt a vicious melancholy settling around me, suffocating, like a widow’s veil. I sensed Mika and Yasmin watching me on either side. I hated the look they’re giving me. I didn’t want their pity. But I took their offered hands, regardless.  
  
“We raise our souls like candles to thee, our Lady who first lit the flame,” Brother Eli intoned. “In honor of the Saint, Elizabeth Beauchene. Bless her name!”  
  
“Bless her name,” the crowd chorused.  
  
“Bless her name,” I murmured, staring at the floor.  
  
~*~  
  
Leave it to bell service to put me in a bad mood. It lingered on me like a bad smell- not unlike a ghoul’s breath- and clouded my mood even after we left the chapel to start our rounds. I shuffled along, my hands stuffed in my pockets, staring at the ground. Normally, I’d want my hair veiling my face, to complete the look- but right then, I didn’t want the reminder that I had my mother’s hair.  
  
The Professor, to his credit, got the hint, and didn’t make a sound during our patrol save for the tapping of his staff on the pavement. So did Yasmin, who knew when I needed space without me having to say anything, and Miki, who was used to not talking much, anyway. But Mika, damn her, thought the silence was too uncomfortable, and couldn’t help but try to talk.  
  
“He’s young, isn’t he? Brother Eli,” Mika was saying. “He looks like he’s our age.”  
  
“Too young to be overseeing bell services,” Miki offered quietly.  
  
“He is,” Maxwell said. “He’s filling in for Father Joseph while he’s away.”  
  
“Why? What’s wrong with Father Joe?” Mika asked.  
  
“Sand sickness,” Maxwell said.  
  
“Oh,” Mika said. “Hm… Brother Eli, Eli… is that short for anything? Like, Elijah?”  
  
“No,” Maxwell said. He glanced at me, just for a second.  “He was named after the Saint.”  
  
“Oh.” Mika said.  
  
She didn’t say much after that.  
  
~*~  
  
It’s said that the presence of the daemon lord, Seth, The Mirage, is heralded by a sandstorm, with the shadows of monsters lurking in the mist. When Seth invaded our planet, he brought his harbinger, the sandstorm, with him. But when he left, the sandstorm stayed, scouring our planet and ruining the vast majority of our farmland, for which we were famous.  
  
Some cities, however, Elk Lake included, escaped intact. They were protected by a barrier of shimmering white light, one that kept Seth’s sandstorm- and his minions- at bay.  
  
These barriers collectively became known as Saint Elizabeth’s Halo, her “last miracle” before supposedly sacrificing herself to banish Seth from the planet. I don’t know about that. I think I’d sooner believe that Demeter’s planetary government just had some last-ditch military-grade shield generators lying around in case of emergency, and the PDF switched on the ones they could before Seth’s forces overwhelmed them and they lost control.  
  
Miracle or not, the barriers won’t last forever. The Halo is losing power over time. It’s still strong enough to keep out Seth’s otherworldly sandstorm, but ghouls and other, worse things do occasionally slip inside.  
  
Some cities, I’ve heard, have started reducing the coverage of their Halo in order to maintain a stable field strength. That means having a perfectly safe daemon-free zone, that nonetheless loses more and more ground to the sandstorm each year. Other cities, like Elk Lake, allow the intrusions for the sake of keeping their territory intact- which means more Hunters, and more patrols.  
  
It’s not impossible for humans to pass through the Halo, by the way. There are some things that can survive outside the shielded zone- wind farms, for example, are a big one, and are one of the main reasons we still have electricity. But the perpetual sandstorm, and the constant threat of ghouls, or worse, mean you probably wouldn’t want to live out there.  
  
I would tell you about how the Halo’s glow serves as artificial sunlight or whatever, but I’m a Hunter, not a farmer. The gaps in the shield are getting wider each year, and it’s my job to make sure nothing gets through.  
  
It’s, uh, not as exciting as you think.  
  
Mainly, it’s just walking. Occasionally fighting, but Mika and the Professor handle that most of the time. Mika, because as scout, she’s up in front and sees them first; the Professor, because he’s a powerful Adept in his own right and doesn’t trust us to use our powers in combat just yet. As for the rest of the time…  
  
“Miss Beauchene,” the Professor began, as we entered the ninth hour of our slog through Elk Lake’s depressingly empty commercial district. “What is the Trinity of Magic and from where do they draw their power?”  
  
“Psionics, which draws from the mind, Divine, which draws from faith, and Arcane, which draws from the outside world,” I recited, my voice flat with fatigue.  
  
“And the outlier, Miss Quintana?”  
  
“Dark magic, which is any magic unclassified due to age, obscurity, or lack of study,” Yasmin put in beside me, doing her best to keep the skip in her step.  
  
“Very good, Miss Quintana,” the Professor went on, “so the saying goes, Dark magic is any magic that hasn’t been studied long enough to fall into the other three.”  
  
“So if I lose a spellbook under my bed, how long does it take for it turn into Dark magic?” Mika asked wryly.  
  
“As long as it takes for you to forget what it does,” Miki said flatly.  
  
“Ser Shimizu has the right idea,” the Professor said, gesturing with his cane. “‘Oh, dear, I’ve lost this incantation for a thousand years. I wonder where it goes. Ah! That’s what it does! Let me put it back on the shelf.’ Picture that, but for entire schools of magic, and you’ve got Dark magic, realm of the obscure, the obtuse, forbidden, and forgotten.”  
  
“Dark magic got lost while editing the wiki,” I mutter. Yasmin snorts.  
  
“Dark magic got lost while editing the wiki! Excellently said!” The Professor says, just a little too loudly, and I idly wonder if he knows what a wiki is at all.  
  
~*~  
  
Night came at the end of a cloudy day, cut through by the occasional shaft of light.  
  
Figuratively, of course. There was no day or night beneath the Halo. Beyond the Halo was the sandstorm, and who knew where the sun was beyond that? But there were subtle differences in the Halo over time. Sometimes, it would dim just a little bit in the evenings, and give us a nice twilight glow. Sometimes, it would grow brighter and then get dimmer, rise and fall, like a pulse- like it was alive.  
  
Some nights, if you didn’t know better, you might mistake the Halo’s glow for moonlight.  
  
But I did know better, and thinking about the Halo, and the Saint by extension, just gave me a headache. So I pulled the curtains shut and fell back into bed.  
  
I heard the sound of water dribbling into a bucket down the hall, and knew that it was Yasmin. As I lay there in bed, with my arm across my eyes, trying to blot out my throbbing headache, I had an idle fantasy of Yasmin and I, taking a real bath together. It was a silly thing, obviously. No one would be that careless with their water ration, even if Hunters got a larger cut. Still…  
  
I sighed. This morning’s melancholy just wouldn’t let up. And now I had a headache, too. My mind and my body were just ganging up on me today.  
  
I decided to put on the news, because if I was going to have a headache, I might as well double down. I reached out blindly with my free hand, clicking on the radio on my nightstand. A familiar voice sounded over the radio- Colonel Amadi Afolayan, Planetary Defense, one of the founders of the Elk Lake Hunter’s Association.  
  
_“People of Demeter, I ask you: what is our worst enemy? I tell you now, it is not the sandstorm battering at our walls, or the ghouls walking the streets. Nor, even is it the master of these invaders, the Mirage, the Defiler himself. No; I speak to you of **fear**. Fear is what cages us; fear is what kills us. But what are we afraid of, really?  
  
We are not afraid of the dark; we are afraid of the unknown. We are not afraid of the invader; we are afraid of being powerless. We are not afraid to fight- we are afraid to fail, to lose, to die!  
  
Here at the Hunter’s Association, you have nothing to fear.  
  
Here you will learn the enemy, and know the enemy. Here you will grasp the power to defeat him, and know that you are not powerless. Here you will train and know that you can fight! That they can be beaten! Here at the Association, you will not be powerless, and you will not be alone.  
  
Look around you. This is your family. These are those who survived. We are brothers, sisters, comrades-in-arms! We are Hunters. Stand strong. Stand together. For together, we shall know no fear!”_  
  
I’ve heard this speech a hundred times. It’s the Hunter recruitment speech, from who knows how long ago. Maybe even before the Halo went up.  
  
Damn it. All this talk of Halos and Hunters is just making that headache worse. And the cheering crowd from twenty years ago, a crowd of ghosts, certainly isn’t helping either. I rub my knuckles into my eyelids, feeling the cloud of melancholy rolling in…  
  
“Eh. It’s not all that.”  
  
One voice- her voice, like light through the clouds.  
  
I feel Yasmin settle in beside me, feel the towel across her shoulders and the wetness of her hair. Then, for a single, longing moment, she is above me, reaching over to my nightstand and silencing my radio with a click.  
  
“He makes being a Hunter sound so heroic,” Yasmin shrugged.  
  
I open my eyes and look at her- really, look at her. Warm, brown eyes. Brown skin. Dark undercut and sideshave that takes way less maintenance than my hair. Gentle smile. Solid. Grounded. The earth beneath my feet, catching me when I fall.  
  
It occurs to me that I should say something. I pick something corny.  
  
“You were pretty heroic this morning, pulling that guy off of me.”  
  
Yasmin smiles at me and mercifully doesn’t lambast my choice of line. Instead, she asks:  
  
“How was your day?”  
  
“You should know. You’ve been with me for all of it.”  
  
“Yeah,” she shrugs. “But it’s still good to ask.”  
  
The bump on the back of my head throbs, and the Halo’s soft glow peeks in past my curtains, both reminders that they’re still there. I groan and burrow my head in the crook of her shoulder.  
  
“It’s over,” I mutter into her skin. Softly, I feel her fingers on my scalp, in my hair.  
  
“You’re here,” Yasmin says. “You made it.”  
  
“I barely even did anything,” I protest.  
  
“You survived,” Yasmin says. “That’s not nothing.”  
  
The words echo in my ears, down the weeks, the years, to old hurts, old urges. I blink the memories away. They land, warm, and wet, on Yasmin’s perfect skin. So much of this world has tried to kill me. I don’t need anyone else on that list.  
  
“I’ll have to do the same thing tomorrow,” I say, and even as I say it I can feel the fatigue of today’s patrol chasing down my muscles, racing to my brain.  
  
“We’ll get there when we get there,” Yasmin says, her hand on my chin, and a question in her eyes.  
  
This is me. This is my world; my life. It’s not exciting, or glorious, or full of tragedy. It’s not the best or the worst life. But it’s a life, and I’ll hold on to it, for as long as I can.  
  
Yasmin’s right here; my friends are next door; the Professor’s just a phone call away.  
  
Tomorrow, there’ll be more of us. This world is ours to endure.  
  
~*~  
  
Some people say the World began on a turtle’s back, or as drops of dew falling from a spear. Some people say the World began with a word, or a song, or a bang. Me, I don’t know about all that. What I do know is how this world began- with a colony ship landing on a lush, uncharted planet, eager to transform it into the breadbasket of the system.  
  
That was how Demeter became the envy of the Olympian Cluster, our rolling fields feeding the waves of settlers chasing the galactic frontier.  
  
And, as cliche as it sounds, for a time, it was good.  
  
Then, twenty years ago, war came to my planet.  
  
The daemon lord, Seth, Aspect of Decay, invaded Demeter with legions of ghoulish undead and their grotesque masters. From one day to the next, Demeter went from a peaceful agri-world to a blazing ruin, with monsters swarming the streets.  
  
Then, suddenly, Seth vanished, taking with him the vast majority of his generals, his sorcerers. Bereft of their masters, his legions of ghouls lost the baleful will empowering them. They degenerated, becoming husks of themselves, reverting to basic instincts- mere animals, not soldiers.  
  
Just like that, for reasons no one could explain, the war was over. But there still wasn’t peace.  
  
My friends and I are the first generation born into a ravaged world- one where monsters roam the streets, and pockets of humanity hold on to whatever safe zones they can. Somehow, we manage to scrape a living. It’s not an easy life; I won’t lie. But I don’t want you to think it’s all bad, either.  
  
Twenty years ago, the sky fell in, and monsters descended upon us, but the world did not end. We’re still here, despite everything. We’ve made it this far. And we’ll make it further. I know we will. We’ll just take it a day at a time.  
  
My name is Eliza Beauchene, and this wretched world hasn’t killed us yet.  
  
Tomorrow is a new day.  
  
**Let’s survive.**  
  
~*~


End file.
